It All Starts With Facial Cleansers

Facial cleanser is very essential to prepare a nice clean canvas before put on the rest of the skincare step and/or make-up. Better penetration of the skincare product can only be achieve on a clean skin. The more your face absorbs, the more benefit it gets.

My personal view is whether you have an oily skin or dry skin, it’s better to always use GENTLE CLEANSER.

Why?

Because usually gentle cleansers do not strip and tightened your skin. The rule is simple: oil is good, excess oil is not. What we want is a balance. If you think by making your face squeaky clean it will get rid of all problems caused by oiliness, you need to rethink. Most likely than not, stripping the natural oil from your skin will only make it produces MORE oil to compensate from the loss. Just leave your skin do its thing, prep it with only what’s good and it will thank you later.

Do not forget to cleanse your neck area too, usually we also apply make-up on the neck so it deserves the same treatment as your skin. After cleansing, PAT dry your face with a towel. Never rub. 🙂

Before I continue with the product review, bear in mind that I always use a make-up remover before doing the actual face cleansing. So I don’t know how well these products cleanse a full on make-up face. I would never recommend you to use facial cleanser as the only cleansing step for a full-on make-up face, anyway.

Let’s start with Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cleanser. The product comes in a 150 ml tube and it costs 17 EUR, not bad. The Kiehl’s official website describes this product as a gentle, pH-balanced liquid cleanser that produce a foaming lather without stripping the natural moisture of the skin. My take on this product is it lathers nicely, enough to make me feel like I clean my face the right way (some people including me still think that the more lather, the cleaner my skin gets). Maybe it is also one of the reason why I only need a pea size amount of it to cleanse my whole face and neck. It is fragrance free which is perfect for my sensitive skin. But it all comes down to the cleansing effectiveness and I don’t have any complain about it. All the remaining make-up is washed off. But what I like the most about this product is that it is easy to rinse and it does not leave any residue behind. The result, my face does not feel tight afterwards.

The second cleanser is a Greek brand known for their natural products. The cleanser I have tried from the brand is Korres White Tea Facial Fluid Gel Cleanser. I get 200 ml of product in an opaque bottle and it costs 18.75 EUR. The name of the product simply tells everything that I need to know. It is gel texture and it has a fresh scent (most probably from the ‘white tea’). What is great about this product is that it contains 78.5 percent natural ingredient, no parabens (some kind of preservatives), no mineral oil (cheap ingredient that can cause irritation), and no silicones (it gives you the temporary smooth feeling by filling in the pores). So far so good. However, this is the most gentle out of the three products. It does not lather as much as I want it to be, which mean I tend to use a little bit more for each cleansing. It takes me one pea size amount for the face and another one for the neck. Apart from that, it cleanses everything from the remaining minor make-up. It’s just that because of the mildness, I don’t see it’s good for removing even a light make-up, let alone a full-on face. The after cleanse makes your face soft but I notice a slight residue, and according to the official website description, it does leave the oat protein moisturizing layer. Don’t freak out! it still gives me a nice fresh clean feeling, it is nothing you and I can’t handle. With all the good stuff in the product, I can’t go wrong with it.

The last product is from Lush. I mean, we all love Lush! This is a facial cleanser bar, not as practical and hygienic as the other two. I never had the intention to purchase this product but I received quite a big chunk that lasted me a month. Originally it costs 8.70 EUR per 100 gr, very good price. To begin with, my face is dry/combination and prone to rosacea (a condition in which facial blood vessels enlarge) due to wrong scrubbing habit back in the days. Lush Fresh Farmacy is made for people suffer from redness. It lathers the most out of the three to the point where I’m worried it dries out my skin even more. I have a hard time cleansing my face with this product because even before rinsing, I can feel my face already tightened. It washes off all the remaining make-up (I might say even the best out of the three). It has some sort of medicine smell and later I figure the number one ingredient in this product is calamine powder. No surprise there, it makes my face squeaky clean. But this is the weird part; my redness is gone (not forever) and it gets better every time I use this cleanser. Plus, after a minute the squeaky face turns into a soft and smooth skin like a baby bum! One tip to make this product lasts. Do not rinse the bar after using, store it the way it is, and only rinse before using it again.